For years, ballet dancer Whitney Huell had an ornament of the Sugar Plum Fairy from "The Nutcracker" hanging on her Christmas tree. The miniature ballerina was African-American like Huell. "This is a very iconic role and a role that many dancers dream of doing, myself included," Huell told Central Standard host Gina Kaufmann.

3 comments:

Anonymous
said...

She probably dances the role very well (not that I'm capable of judging), but would the "Arts Community" be as supportive if Hugh Jackman were to be cast as the male lead in a production of "Porgy and Bess"?

Until then, this has the smell of a "stunt" about it, similar to the "Arts Community" raising $500,000 to support "the Arts", then spending at least half of the money on a reception to pat themselves on the ass for raising the $500k.

They aren't backing off of the minority angle. A quick scan of the article before I closed it I saw African-American at least three times. For one: American born and raised to American born and raised parents means she's an American who's black. Two, as in the previous post, I guessed she is probably disgusted at the oooh oooh a minority dancer she's getting in nearly every article that I've read. She has a college degree and has clearly worked in that field for a number of years and excelled at what she does. Three, I continue to feel bad for her: "her" community is small. You have covertly racist white libs and hoity-toity rich who will associate with her but constantly think about her color rather than her skill, you have overt white progressive racists who won't associate her because of the color of her skin, you have blacks who won't associate her because she exudes all the typical signs of "whiteness" in education and (probably) mode of speech, she's left with small groups of conservatives (white and black) who generally keep to themselves. I'm sure she'd be a perfectly pleasant young woman just to sit down and talk ballet with. If I could talk ballet.